Farmers go surfing in Mauritius

A loan programme of the Development Bank of Mauritius has been in operation since 1999 to help modernise the agricultural sector through ICTs. Loans of MUR 30,000 are provided to farmers at 3% for buying computers, thus enabling producers of modest means to access the World Wide Web. Several thousand farmers have already made use of the programme, but the numbers would have been even higher if incomes in the sector had not tumbled by 40% following several years of drought. The favourite Websites of the surfing farmers are the Mauritius Sugar Industry Research Institute (MSIRI) and the Public Relations Office of the Sugar Industry. There they find recommendations about sugar varieties and information about soil, fertilisers, weather data, marketing, market prices and links all over the world. For those farmers who cannot obtain the computers, a network of fifty cooperatives with Web access will do searches on request, for a small fee. They put together a technical dossier for the interested farmer. There is no stopping progress! from: Syfia 133, February 2000 MSIRI Réduit, Mauritius Fax: + 230 454 19 71 Email: MSIRI.@msiri.intnet.mu Website: msiri.intnet.mu

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation
Format:	News Item biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation 2000
Online Access:	https://hdl.handle.net/10568/46864 https://hdl.handle.net/10568/99590
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